The Devlopment of Reflexive Anthropology Essay -- Cultural Anthropolog

The Devlopment of Reflexive AnthropologyReflexive anthropology has pressured scholoars to credit their sustain biases and come along increasingly inwards when studying other glosss. Reflexive anthropology is a pay away from the traditional study of a clearly defined us and them, that seeks to shift towards indentification rather than difference. It attempts to uncover the politics behind ethnography. Reflexivity shows how we atomic number 18 effected by others, and how others are effected by us. It holds anthropologists accountable for what they write, and how they maintain culture. Anthropologists like Dorinne Kondo and Renato Rosaldo have greatly influenced the devlopment of reflexive anthropology through their enthnographies.When Kondo, a japanese-American woman, went to Japan to for research, she was unprepared for how her own identity would complicate her study. Because she looked Nipponese, and in some ways felt Japanese, but did not have the cultural knowledge a nd lyric poem skills of a true native, she was pressured by others to conform. They wanted her to be a Japanese women, and she (initi onlyy) readily complied. In doing so, the lines between informant and ethnographer became blurred, as she examined her own transition, and her own dissolution and reconstitution of self. It become increasingly impossible for Kondo to write an ethnography from a distanced, us/ them, point of view, as she was (outwardly) becoming more like them. Kondo statesI emphasize here the collusion between all parties involved, for it is important to recognize the ways in which informants are also actors and agents and that the negotiation of reality that takes stain in the doing of ehtnography involves complex and ... ...after the death of his wife that Rosaldo felt the anger and melancholy that he believed was related to the Ilongots aspectings. Through his own sad experience, Rosaldo thought that could rede the Ilongots deeper reason for headhunting.R osaldos belief that people might authentically be able to understand each other on all levels is quite problomatic. He even states that the notion of position also refers to how life story experiences both enable and inhibit particular kinds of insight (19). Whereas he applies this annotate to his own ablity to understand headhuntung because of his feelings about his wifes death, he brush off other cultural factors that differentiate the Ilongot people from himself. Although he is able to feel some sort of connection to his informants through his own pain, he is in no position to be able to state that he understands the cultures ritual.